Charlotte is back on the beat

The £1million she won on one of TV's first reality shows could have been Charlotte Hobrough's ticket to a new life.

But less than three years later, she has returned to the old one.

The 28-year- old blonde - who earned the nickname Charlotte the Harlot after cheating on her husband with a fellow contestant on ITV's Survivor - is back working as a £23,000-ayear police constable.

Mrs Hobrough left the South Wales Constabulary after scooping top prize in the programme's first series in 2001 and embarked on a career in TV.

But after stints presenting Channel 4's Big Breakfast and ITV2's coverage of the second series of Survivor, the work dried up.

So, it appears, did the £1million.

The former beauty queen has, of course, had some help spending the money from her husband Mark, the police sergeant who forgave his wife's affair with Adrian Baukham, a 22-year- old barrister's clerk she met on Survivor's desert island set.

First came the £400,000 luxury home in Sully, near Cardiff. Then the couple splashed out on a Porsche to replaced their second-hand Ford Fiesta and enjoyed holidays in the Caribbean, the Far East and the U.S.

Mrs Hobrough insisted yesterday there was no financial motive for her return to the beat, saying she only ever planned to take a temporary career break.

"I'm back at work because I miss the challenge of being in the police force," she explained.

"Winning Survivor was a wonderful

experience but it's time to get back to normality."

She added as she pounded the beat as a member of Barry's community first policing team: "I'm thrilled to be back in a job

I thoroughly enjoy and look forward to the new challenges ahead."

She sang a somewhat different tune, however, on the night she accepted the £1million cheque in the summer of 2001.

Boasting she would spend it on "fast cars and diamonds", she said it was "doubtful" she would return to the police.

A friend said yesterday: "Although she isn't broke, Charlotte realises the money is running out fast.

"After a wild three years there's not enough left to keep going for the rest of her life. Unless she works it will simply run out."

The one-time Miss Cardiff used her shapely figure to win over Survivor's male contestants but admitted to a devious side that allowed her to be "wonderfully nice and wonderfully awful".

Her affair with Mr Baukham was largely conducted off-camera.

But when the series was over he told of open-air sex sessions which began days after they first met.

Mrs Hobrough played down

the romance as she attempted to patch up her marriage, claiming she was "distraught" at cheating on her husband and that it had been "blown out of proportion."

Yet fellow contestants claimed the couple's antics had kept them awake at night.